In a past life I actually worked as a professional rigger for a couple of years and performed quite a number of splices in double braid rope following the directions in Brian Toss's excellent book, the Riggers Apprentice. In the shop where I worked, we had access to the patented Splicing Wand Toss designed and uses and I can recall no difficulty aside from the muscle work required to splice large diameter rope no matter what technique you use. I had read about the samson fids and seen the videos, etc and when I decided that I wanted to splice some eyes in a set of new docklines, I purchased this kit in order to be able to splice most lines in the future--well after a number of attempts and many hours, I quit--it is very tricky to perform the critical core tuck in an eyesplice usin these fids. Spend a bit more money and purchase an appropriate splicing wand--I had my splice done in less than 20 minutes once this tool arrived.